{"data":{"id":"545","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":545,"topgoose_id":2132,"tms_id":545,"display_name":"Philip Guston","sort_name":"Guston Philip","display_date":"1913–1980","begin_date":"1913","end_date":"1980","biography":"\u003cp\u003ePhilip Guston came to the United States from Canada as a young child in 1919 with his Russian émigré parents, who settled their family in California. In 1927 Guston enrolled in Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, where, together with his friend and classmate \u003ca href=\"/artists/1039\"\u003eJackson Pollock\u003c/a\u003e, he was soon expelled for producing satirical broadsides. Continuing his artistic and intellectual explorations largely on his own, he began his formal career making figurative art in styles he explored until the late 1940s, including murals made in the 1930s concerned with political and social issues. After his permanent move to New York in 1949, the figures in Guston’s work gradually disappeared; his canvases became increasingly textured and his color palette more refined until his signature Abstract Expressionist style emerged.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/2241\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eDial\u003c/em\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/a\u003edisplays Guston’s confident\napproach to pure abstraction, and\nthe painting glimmers from the use of\ngestural yet tempered brushstrokes.\nIt includes the artist’s characteristic pinks\nand reds, with the concentration of\ncolor and broader brushwork at the center\nof the canvas. The composition is\nstructured loosely upon a grid inspired\nby Piet Mondrian. Guston wrote about\nthe significance of\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;Dial\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003eto him, “This\npicture has a special importance for me\nas it is a culminating point of a certain\nperiod of my painting.” In the late 1960s\nGuston would follow a path back to\nfiguration, incorporating a cartoon-inflected\niconography into his painting. This\ntransformation, which shocked the art\nestablishment at the time, landed him\nat the forefront of the Neo-Expressionist\nmovement and a new, postmodern era.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500023901","wikidata_id":"Q701952","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:01:46.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-12T07:04:36.410-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/545/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/545/exhibitions"}}}}